01 — Foundations
The ground on which the witness of St. Vincent of Lérins (d. c. 445) stands: the great island monastery of Lérins off the Gallic coast, founded by Honoratus around 410 and famed within a generation as a “school of bishops,” and the elusive figure of the monk Vincent himself, of whom almost nothing certain is known beyond what his one book and a single later notice tell us.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; the canon of catholicity)
Vincent belongs to the brilliant ascetic and theological world of fifth-century southern Gaul — the world of Honoratus, Eucherius, Hilary of Arles, Faustus of Riez, and, across the water at Marseilles, John Cassian. Lérins was its center: a small island that produced an extraordinary number of the bishops of Gaul and an entire current of theology. This section establishes that setting and then turns to what can — and cannot — be said about Vincent: the soldier-turned-monk tradition, the pseudonym Peregrinus under which he wrote, and the single notice in Gennadius from which his name and approximate dates derive.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Isle of Lérins | The island monastery off the coast of Provence: Honoratus’s foundation (c. 410), Lérins as a “school of bishops” and a theological current, and its leading figures — Honoratus, Eucherius, Hilary of Arles, Faustus of Riez — within whose company Vincent wrote. |
| The Monk Vincent | What little is securely known: the notice in Gennadius (De viris illustribus 64), the soldier-turned-monk tradition, the pseudonym Peregrinus, the approximate date of death (c. 445), and the structured uncertainties that surround all of it. |
See Also
- The Purpose and Structure of the Commonitorium — the one work on which Vincent’s whole reputation rests
- Vincent and Augustine — the grace controversy that defined the Lérins milieu
- A Lérins Theology — the broader school and its reputation reassessed
- St. John Cassian — the abbot of Marseilles at the heart of the same Provençal theological world
- The Pre-Schism Church — the fifth-century Church of the undivided West
References
- Gennadius of Marseilles. De viris illustribus (Lives of Illustrious Men) 64. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 3. 1892.
- Moxon, Reginald S., ed. The Commonitorium of Vincentius of Lérins. Cambridge Patristic Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915.
- Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
- Guarino, Thomas G. Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013.